Review of Real Estate Crowdfunding Platform EstateGuru

October 15th 2018 / by Marco Schwartz

In order to diversify my investments, I regularly invest on new platforms that I then review so you too can invest on them & feel confident in doing so.

In this article, I will review the real estate crowdfunding investment platform EstateGuru, that I got to know by reading out it on real estate crowdfunding blogs, but also directly heard about it via other investors. Therefore, I really wanted to try it out and to add some more property investments to my portfolio.

The EstateGuru Platform

EstateGuru is a European Real Estate Crowdfunding platform based in Estonia, that mainly funds property loans to businesses. As such, all the loans on the platform always come with a property as a guarantee, which makes it very safe for the investors. Note that I usually prefer to invest in equity real estate crowdfunding (where you get a monthly rent from your properties), so I was at first a bit reluctant to invest in property loans. However, the fact that you can easily diversify into many loans will also provide a monthly income at the end and will add more diversification to my portfolio.

So far, they funded over 500 loans, and only had one defaulted loan which is a very good ratio:

As you can see from the graph, they are continuously growing, and they plan to expand to the UK & to Portugal in the future (currently most of the loans are around the Baltic countries).

Creating an Account & Depositing Money

As for most of the real estate crowdfunding platforms, the first step is to open an account. On EstateGuru, this is very easy and it took me less than 5 minutes to get my account opened.

Once this is done, you can actually add money to your EstateGuru account. I did that via TransferWise, and the money was on my account in 2 days.

As a note here, I now systematically try to also withdraw money on all the platforms that I review, just to make sure there is nothing shady on this side. For EstateGuru, there were no problems at all and I got my money back in 2 days as well.

Browsing Available Deals & Investing

We can now actually browse deals that are available on the platform. As I mentioned before, most of the loans on the platforms are short to medium term property loans, which is great as you will get your money back faster & it's usually a sign of a solid borrower. Note that for all loans, the property is, of course, coming as a guarantee in case the borrower wouldn't pay back. The interests rates on the platform are usually around 11%, which is great for real estate crowdfunding. This is a sample of what was available when I started to invest on the platform:

Then, you can also dive deeper into each loan and get a lot of details concerning the loan:

For some of them, you can even get drone footage of the properties, which I think is pretty cool. On this page, you'll also find information about the borrower, and the exact loan repayment calendar.

The Auto-Invest Function

You could, of course, invest manually into each loan, but this is not what I would recommend on the platform. As the default rate on EstateGuru is really low (0.2% when I invested), it's safe to actually spread all your capital into as many loans as possible. And for that, they have a very handy auto-invest function that is really easy to configure:

I activated mine with just one parameter: short-term loans only. This will ensure that I invest in the highest quality of loans on the platform, and also that I will get my money back quicker. Note here that the loans on the platform are usually funded very rapidly, so I might raise the 50 Euros cap in the future as currently, I can't get my money invested fast enough.

First Returns on the Platform

Let's now talk about the first returns that I got on the platform since I first invested. So far, I can attest that all the repayments were on time, with the correct amount received. This is the current money I got back from EstateGuru:

I will of course update this article when I receive more money from the loans, as it's too soon to calculate the actual return from the investments at this stage.

Verdict: Should You Invest on EstateGuru?

As I mentioned at the start, I usually don't like the idea of invest in property loans when it comes to real estate crowdfunding, as I prefer more 'traditional' investments where I own a part of a property that will give me a monthly income from the rent. However, I have to say that I am really satisfied with EstateGuru. The fact that I can invest in a wide variety of loans with great returns means that after some time it would be like receiving a monthly 'rent' from my investments on the platform. This, combined with the very low default rate of the platform, makes EstateGuru a great platform in my opinion on which I will definitely reinvest in the future.

Therefore, I definitely recommend trying out EstateGuru - it's a great way to start a real estate crowdfunding portfolio, or to diversify your existing property portfolio with high-quality short-term property loans.

Have you also already tried EstateGuru? Or do you have any questions about my investments on the platform? Don't hesitate to share below!

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Raffaele a month ago

Thanks Marco for your review! I was wondering if you had prepared also a review of the Lendy platform.
I noticed you included it in your portfolio. I registered also, but I found it not so straightforward.. Thanks in advance,
Raffaele